Extinct: The Quiz

Contents

Host

Broadcast

Endemol for ITV, 12 to 16 December 2006

Synopsis

Quiz to tie in with ITV1's week of programmes highlighting animals in danger of extinction, where viewers can vote to determine which animal in danger of extinction is best, with all the losers being brutally slain, presumably (actually the projects involving the winning animal gets half all the funds raised, with the other half being split equally amongst the losers).

Extinct: The Quiz is a pretty standard quiz really, eight family teams of four are reduced to one over the course of five days, with the winners winning a lovely Kenya safari holiday and the losers going away with some wildlife themed prizes (presumably a satire on the fact people losing on gameshows still getting prizes faces extinction, yeah? Oh.)

Most of the opening rounds are individual multiple-choice rounds on keypads involving pictures of animals, animal words, which animal eats this food? That sort of thing. Before each break a taped celebrity poses a true or false bonus question for the kids to answer on the buzzers after the break with correct answers rewarded and incorrect guesses penalized.

One round involves an animal being bought in and Zoe having a chat with the handler asking lots of predetermined questions, which form the basis of a buzzer quiz. And then there's Animal Crackers, where the adults in each team play a game of animal charades, except they can use animal noises, and seems to have little point other than a comedy humiliation exercise.

Teams at the top of the leaderboard go through to the next round, the bottom two have to play Family Face-Off, which is what happens if you inadvertantly wander into a large pit of tigers. This round has the four members of each team facing off individually against the other team in a buzzer quiz, with all the questions of the A or B multiple-choice variety. Right answers mean you get to sit down, wrong answers mean your opponent gets to sit down and you join the back of the queue. The first family to get all four of their members sitting down is the winner and goes through to the next round, the losers go home.

Zoe Ball is likeable but she's not really a natural fit for this show, and there's really no need to drag out the reveal to every question during the final elimination round - we're shouting "get on with it!" far too much for our liking.